The Hurt Locker = Girl Power

I've been meaning to get this blog rolling for some time, and I always keep putting it off. But the fact is, I really want to have place to share some smaller ideas and thoughts without having to make it relate directly to Arthur's Hall.

I got some quality inspiration last week when I went to see the new Iraq War movie "The Hurt Locker". Now this is one of the better war movies of this decade! It is shot beautifully, and feels very real. But the most amazing thing about this movie is that it was directed by a woman.

Here's the fact, there just aren't many great female directors in Hollywood. Maybe there aren't many women interested in film making, maybe the deck is stacked against them, or maybe the visual and observational skills required to be a great director just aren't very common among the female population. I don't know what it is... but Kathryn Bigelow has made a giant leap forward for female movie directors with "The Hurt Locker".

I'm going to completely avoid plot details here, because everyone reading this should see the movie. I will speak very generally. "The Hurt Locker" is so well crafted, I can't imagine there are more than a small handful of directors in the world who could have pulled off a film like this. All the characters are men, and they are presented nearly perfectly. Nothing about the portrayal of these men feels false, and to be honest, there is nothing that could be seen as a "woman's perspective" in the entire movie. This is exactly as it should be. A war movie is about war... not the battle of the sexes. How Bigelow got this amazing independently financed war movie made is beyond me, but this one is right up there with the war films directed by Spielberg, Riddley Scott, and Eastwood.

"The Hurt Locker" goes right beside Death Proof as one of my favorite "Feminist" films of recent years. Not a film about women and their feelings... but a film where women kick ass competing in a man's world, and win. Bigelow just did it from behind the camera.